Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow.
And I'm Catherine Jileco.
Every Thursday, we're bringing you a library find, a pick from our archives, and a parenting or pop culture tidbit or two. Let's start with Catherine's library find of the week.
So it may be spring right now, I mean it happens late in my corner of the world, but I would say we're pretty much there. But I'm going to mention a sort of wind Try themed book today. It is called Bear in a Bathrobe, And I freely urge you to go look at the cover and see this bear and this bathrobe and the tiny pink ice skates that the bear is wearing on the cover, which is probably what caught my eye first. This this bear. You know, it's winter there they're gonna have this bear is ready
to hibernate. He's like, he's got his his robe. It has pockets for his snacks, it has like a hood to keep his his head warm. And he's like, sweet, I'm just gonna be inside and I'm gonna hibernate and cozy. I'm gonna be cozy. And his friends are like, oh, come on, we're gonna play outside. We're gonna go ice skating, And he is just very first of all, enjoying his cozy indoor time and also you know, worried about what could happen if he went skating. He could he could
hurt himself. So but then the book, of course is about how to uh step outside of that comfort zone and try new things and even if you you know, take risks and and but it's also like the ways to sort of mitigate the risk. So yes, yeah, so I think it doesn't look very sweet.
Want to be about how everybody is different and some people get to do things that they want to do, and don't let peer pressure force you out of your cozy den onto the ice. Tell people that you're a bear and this is what bears do, and hope they have a good time, and then snuggle back down and put on Netflix and enjoy the winter.
No, it's not that, I guess it's not that, because that's not what children's books do.
No, it's not we need I need a line of children's books for WIMPs, you know, to let your kid know it's okay, it's okay. If you don't want to be at bat, you can just stay out in the outfield, honey, it's fine. Or you know, if you want to just hit and sit in the hoccy penalty box and not ever do anything, you're good. Yes, Instead, we have to inspire our kids to.
Break the roles.
Yeah, go boldly forward, your friends make you do things. It's fine. What could go wrong? Yes, it's a cute girl. Drive by and say hey byre one, come in your phone. Understand this all. Please listen to our episode to you earlier.
I will also give a slight side recommendation or mention, let's say, to Linda Holmes, who is someone we have been listening to for a long time on NPR and has now written her third novel. Oh, and it's.
Going on Audible right now.
It's back after this and the main character is a podcast producer. Yay, Yeah, I mean, and it's an enjoyable read. You know. It's a romance like her other ones have been, like kind of a rom com. And I like the characters a lot, you know. I like the way that she the dialogue I think is really she has a good ear for it, you know, the sort of like
obstacle that is placed before the couple. I didn't find to be particularly convincing, and that was kind of the problem I had with the other with their previous one, which is called Flying, Flying Solo. So I think that's like a weak area, but it's still it's still an enjoyable read, and especially if you care about podcasts.
I see that on audible in the audiobook she narrates it herself this time.
Well, there you go.
I think the last couple of times she had Julia Whalen, who now has her own audiobook enterprises. Yes, so maybe that's why. I don't know, but yes, I shall have to put that on my wish list. I just finished reading last night. I finished listening to The Triumph of Seeds Seed. You talked about those lasts, then, by all means,
go listen to that book. It is interesting but also something you can just sort of have on and if you don't get every single word of it, it's not going to make you feel bad, right, So I like audio books like that. Sometimes I'm doing other things, you know.
Yep.
Anyway, so a good time for me to look for another book, right and with that book, I will undoubt it later be drinking coffee, and I have a coffee related. I don't know if it's quite a recommendation, but a discussion. Okay, I've mentioned numerous times I think that I am enjoying
my pour over coffee set up here. I feel very very involved with my drink when I take my little metal filter and I put it on top of my cup, and I put the coffee grounds in it, and I pour the hot water over it, and I wait for it to trickle through, and the coffee has always tasted pretty good afterwards. But default in that system is that it's a pain in the bleep to clean out the metal filters. I could put a paper filter in, but
then you kind of taste the paper filter. And also it's you know, making trash, which I don't need to make because I could just use the metal filters and wash them out. So I've been pretty happy with that except when I'm actually cleaning out the filters. But I was looking on a coffee website I go to from time to time, and I saw this thing called AeroPress.
I don't know if you've heard of an AeroPress, but it's like a hard plastic tube that you set on top of the cup and you put a lid on the bottom of it with a little filter in it, a little round filter, and then you put the coffee on top. You pour the water into this tube, and then you take another thing and plunge the cop punge it down into the tube so that the coffee gets
forced through the filter and into the cup. And then when you're done, amazingly, you just take the whole thing to the trash and you just push it a little harder and pop the little puck with the coffee, and the filter just pops out all by itself. Very minimal cleanup. That sounded great to me. It's still a pour over thing, but you know, less cleanup. He doesn't want less cleanup. So I got myself, ordered myself one of these things. It finally came, made myself some coffee. Boy was it easy?
Boy?
Was the cleanup easy? Just as advertised? Pop out it goes, and everything's relatively clean. Sadly, however, the coffee tastes.
Offul oh no.
So I did some research and it does say works best on this grind of coffee, and I had a much finer grind of coffee, which means nothing to me. I don't grind my own beans. I just get stuff. I get this flavor of the month coffee from Blackout Coffee, and I like it very much, but it's very finely ground, and Grock explained to me kindly that the more ground it is, the more oils and flavors and stuff comes out of it when it is hit by hot water. And so this is not the coffee I have, is
not good for this particular device. But Corot gave me some suggestions, and you know, you could spend less time brewing it. You could put some more boiling water in it after it's in the cup. You could plunge it slower or faster. I don't remember. There was things you could do, and I did them and it was better, but it was still bitter, just a really bitter taste. And if you look up AeroPress, it will say, well, if you use fine coffee, it's going to be bitter.
So it's my own fault. And I do have some less fine coffee that I use sometimes, and I can make a decent cup with the AeroPress with that, so I'm still sort of using it on certain coffees, but I can't use it on the coffee I drink every day,
which is sad. Yeah, but if you are a person who grinds their own beans, which not enough time in the day you want to fiddle with getting just the right grind for the AeroPress, you could probably get yourself a pretty tasty cup of coffee from it, and the popping the filter and the used coffee into the trash can is very satisfying.
Yeah, it seems like it would be, yes.
But you had Again, it's something that works best if you use a large scoop of coffee, which I can't do with the finally ground coffee because it's not only bitter but extremely strong, so I use less and then it doesn't pop off so much as it kind of dribbles off. It's still easier to clean, but not as satisfying. Right, So a mixed review. If you use it as they tell you to use it, it's great. Right, you try to use it differently, you're going to have a subpar experience.
And boy, there may have been a time in my life when I could have drank a cup of strong, bitter coffee, but that ain't now. I'm a coffee wimp. Lots of milk, lots of extra water. Sure, pour it in, right, let's weaken it down to a mild cocoa Flavorshell. Yeah, So anyway, that is my is my aero press review us as advertised. Yeah, and don't assume that it'll be fine, right, Okay, you know you could just put some coffee in it, pour some water in it, just to do that.
Exactly. That is. That does sound very satisfying.
That's awesome.
Nice.
So what do we have from the archives this week?
We have what we called at the time, the Critter Report. We have been kind of, you know, looking for something like this because we both have critters in our homes that we like to talk about.
Yes, and we have often even without any excuse.
That's right.
So now that you have heard our critters on this very podcast, although they are not you've drugged them today so that they don't interfere.
Yes, I gave I gave the one a little bit of a downer, just because the barking is part of just an extreme anxiety, like it's this dog is I don't know, and my husband swears up and down that she doesn't do this when I Am not home.
So it's it's like.
She has separation anxiety, but it's together anxiety with me only so.
Well, that's a problem when by eight.
Thirty in the morning, she had already been taken outside and played with and fed and watered and everything, you know, multiple times, lots of you know, as much playtime as I could give her, and she was still like just look out the window, racing, racing from window to window, freaking out. And I knew I had like a full day ahead of me. I was just like, today is going to be a downer kind of a day. It does seem to be effected. I mean, we have already
she gets like calming treats, you know, we have. We've tried a lot of things. Let's just say, yeah, you know, we have the calming things. We try to give her just physical activity, mental stimulation by giving her like puzzle toys,
and but some days that's that's not enough. It's the thing that has finally gotten me to move to the upstairs office space to work, which you know, I've been resisting for years, Like there's no there's I don't know why, but you know, I always just wanted to work downstairs at the dining room table. It's like I'm by the kitchen, I can see out the windows. It's just like a
nice I don't know, I just like it. And when we were in a position to leave the door the back door open and let the dogs go in and out with the doggy door, like then I would be there, and so all that has changed. Yeah, so we do find that if I work upstairs that helps a little bit with the oh geez, freaking out at the windows situation.
Why does she just do it when you're there?
I don't know. I'm going to start a training class with her in a week and luck we got out. Because if she's clearly so smart, like she's such a there has to be a way to teach her not to panic, you know. So that's what I want to learn.
Yeah, yeah, that's rough.
So that's maybe I know, I just you also, Yeah, I mean it's like I feel bad, you know. I obviously the barking is annoying, and but it's more like she's so stressed out and I don't I don't want her to be that way, you know. So so yeah, you hope to be able to settle her down a little bit.
Yeah, we had a very barky pooch, but it wasn't anxiety. It was just you know, I think she heard things very sharply and so wanted to just inform us. Yeah, of a truck three blocks away, right, and you know, also a mailman. And she's the dog we had that like killed a rodent in the backyard. So she was she was pretty uh, she was on it. You know, she was patrolling the the area. She was looking for trouble. She was letting us know we.
Were really setting setting traps with baby dolls.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Keep out the intruders.
But our current dog also clearly has anxiety issues. But fortunately they do not manifest in loud ways. They manifest in her hiding under things. Yeah, you know, being very quiet and very timid and you know, shaking like a leaf when raining outside. Poor baby. So maybe I should look into some pharmaceuticals for her too, Yeah, a special, a special food from time to time, because I I guess the anxiety affects the the flora in the digestive system and then she has to reregulate it with this biome,
expensive biome food. But yeah, poor baby. But I spent two hours in the dog park again this week. This is I think I'm going to do this every week because it's just fun. Being there for a long time and seeing a lot of dogs and also talking to a lot of dog people. People are very chatty at the dog park, and I enjoy that because we're talking about dogs. Nobody's talking about anything else, only talking about dogs.
So when lady was complaining about how her neighbor didn't like her dog, she lives in an apartment, adorable little dog. I can see having trouble with some dogs, but nobody would have trouble with this dog except that it has toenails that I am sure, click click across the floor. But other than that, such a little doll. And somebody else's dog was very, very timid, and somebody else came to the gate of the dog park saying, my dog's
kind of mean sometimes. Can I come in? And everybody said no, go away, and I said, I'm going to be here for two hours. If you see a clear outcome in. We're in line with you. Indeed, this dog paid no attention to my dog at all.
So she did come back.
Yes, Well, it was about ten minutes before we were going to have to leave. But finally the everybody left and I saw her standing nearby with her dogs. A young girl with this dog, and I said, come over, come over, Claire. But I feel bad. I mean, mean, dogs have as much right to use the dog park as anybody else, and I didn't. Probably there was one bad time with this dog, and so now she's super conciliatory to people, right.
But you know, we've started taking ours to a park to just again to give her as much running around time and physical activity as we can. And of course this caused my husband to need another toy once he had experienced it at the dog park, which was a
remote control car. Somebody brought one, and my goodness, like he you know, the second he came home, he's like, oh, we're getting I'm buying this and you know it just and so of course he did already buy it and tried to use it in the byard, but there's not enough room. Like they can catch it in the backyard, they can't catch it at the at the park if you you know, run it. As far as is.
This a toy car that is meant for the taunting of animals or is it a toy car that's meant to be a toy and you just use it with your.
Animals, I think it's more of the latter.
Okay, Yeah, like using a laser pointer to drive your cat crazy. Yeah, it's not intended for cats, but yeah, not necessarily.
Yeah, yes, which.
Means if your dog got a hold of this thing, they could probably make it a pile of plastic in about thirty seconds.
Yeah. Well, I believe they've already should chewed some bits of it, So.
Some pet toy manufacturer needs to come up with one of those that could be chewed.
Right, that's more durable.
It wouldn't seem to be too hard, right, because it's a nice idea. Yeah, yeah, dog to chase, right, but if they catch it and it's a bunch of plastic parts because it's a cheap piece of leap, then that's not good.
Yeah, and this not it wasn't very cheap. Oh so.
Yes, so he dissolves to many pieces of sharp lastic.
Yeah. Yeah, and I had to hear all about all the reasons why it was necessary. Mm hmm. Sure, oh goodness, sure.
I like that somebody makes a motorized mouse for cats. Yeah, chase, dogs would chase that.
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting like the dog park, right, Like you bring something like that, then you know that you it's like when we were talking about sharing. You know, you have to know that you're gonna let all the all.
The puppies play with it, right, just like at the playground. Right, don't bring it if you don't want.
To share, right, because there's no way to be like, no, this is not for you.
Only toys I ever see at the dog park are really grody looking tennis balls balls. Yeah, and people have these things, these slings that throw them a long way, yeah, big plastic slings. But the tennis balls always look like they are well chewed and dirt caked. So my personal dog has no interest in them. Yeah. Oh it's like I ain't putting that in my mouth. Forget it playing with toys at home. So she's not gonna she's not
getting croach on anything at the dog park. So she will smell the butt of every dog there, of course, get her nose right in there, and also smell every pile of poop and spot of pea. Yeah, that's what she does. She'll run around with the other dogs some, but mostly she's there on a smelling expertise. So this is how easy dogs are to please. They just need some pea, right, and they're good. You're gonna write a treatise on that pee, but that poo chad for breakfast
and what breed? Yep, they seem quite quite intent about it. Where do they learn from sniffing each other's butts that they know each other?
Oh?
Yeah, sniffed you, I know you? Nice to see again. It's so weird. It's like the first thing they do at the dog bark ah, nice to see you. Put your tail up.
Please, first start of business.
It's like shaking hands, you know.
M Oh there we get a little jingle.
Hi, hey, hi sweetie. Oh oh, well, well we have no other critters to speak up at the moment, right, I think in our podcast archive podcast we were talking about critters of all sorts.
Yes, well we had Nicole because at that time and Nicole was always good for many different critters.
Cats who were delivering to her dead lizards I believe.
Yeah. Well, and that was when she still hat a dog and her son had like her son would keep lizards too, and she had all kinds of yeah, of animals in.
Her orbit for a while. Maybe I shouldn't mention this to I have something on wouldn't to knock on. But we had for a while mice. Yes, and we were, you know, uh, tolerating them for a while. Really, if they could have just avoided pooping on my counters, I probably would have let them let them alone. Occasionally we would see one and who was of course more scared of us than anything. But you know, there was poop, and yeah, just sort of the unsettling idea that behind
our oven was an entire mouse ecosystem. Right. So eventually we had somebody, an exterminator, who sold their services to us because we're suckers, and they said, oh, by the way, do you have any mice? And we said, well yeah. So then they start putting these glue traps everywhere and poison everywhere, including in back of our oven, which is.
Like, oh, yeah, like we eat food from me?
Yeah, is that. I had them take that one out first, but you know, and so we still have I don't think the mice went for the glue traps. I think they just said, well, this has become a hostile environment. Where they did find a couple, I guess I don't want anything to do with it, right, I'm not going up into our attic where they put a whole bunch of stuff ever. Again, I just find it all barbaric.
But at the same time, don't poop on my counters in a simple request, right, I know you're here when you poop on my counters.
Yeah, exactly. If I can live in behind, I can live in ignorance.
I exactly happy it.
Exactly.
Don't run across my kitchen floor when the light's on, and don't poop on my counters, and we can live in harmony exactly. But you know, they just had to push it, move the toaster, and there's like a little pile of mouse crap on. Oh, it's just you know it. So but I feel very bad. I feel terrible about the measures that are taken to get rid of mice. Right, So I just will never go up up indoor attic again,
you know. And then I say to my husband, if you looked up there to see if there's any other victims, isn't that your computer graveyard? Yes, that's my computer graveyard. All my old publications, magazines and I wrote in and stuff like that all up there. Wease our suitcases are up there, so it's like.
I guess you're never going anywhere.
Yeah, Well he can go up and get the suitcases, and I just won't think about where they've.
Been, where they've been, what they've seen.
So we seem to be relatively crittericized. There's still there's like a bunny that lives by our front steps, and I think I've mentioned before we called the landlord and still there. It's either the same bun or generations of bunnies that have taken that job. Right, But occasionally, you know, you go out and look for the mail and you look down and there's a bunny looking up at you. It's like, hello, man, nice day, exactly, we'll have the red for you soon. And they don't. We've noticed that,
like like bunnies don't aren't afraid of humans anymore. No, they used to be afraid. I think it's COVID that made the difference, because all the humans went inside, the bunnies just kind of had the run of the place. Yeah, and so it's like, well, you're not so tough if you're like hiding from viruses.
Some invisible virus. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely noticed that there was an uptick in the presence.
Yeah, after there's more of them and they're just they don't run. They used to skitter, and maybe if you have a dog.
They skitter.
We had a dog once said very much, this isn't the dog that killed the groundhog. This was another dog. It was a German shepherd. She very much wanted to eat herself a bunny. She just was super on it. And anytimes she saw a bunny, that bunny was in mortal danger. Right, and the bunny seemed to realize that
and get the bleep out of there. Yeah, but and and the dog would chase it with me holding the leashes, right exactly, We'll let go if you don't want to run with me, I had, I had forced right, but I'm gonna have that bunny.
Yeah, ours, both of ours would would go after bunnies for sure if given me which and you know they do show up in our yard quite a bit. And yeah, but the bunnies can get through the fence. The dogs cannot. Right, So we did have to reinforce the fence for this new dog because and I told my husband for like weeks, I'm like, she's gonna go on under like there's a spot in between our yard and our there's a spot under the fence, and she can fit. I know she's
gonna go under there. And sure enough she did, and so now we had to put we put a bunch of rocks and then he put like some basically like chicken wire type stuff.
And yeah, so yeah, I told you we had the same situation with a dog who was like, well, you know, all I had to do was dig and push myself through some loose wires and do this. I thought you wanted me to go another Yes, dogs, we love them. Yeah, don't always like what they do, but we love them.
Yeah.
And we love seeing other people's dogs and then leaving them with the dog park. Dog the dog. The dog park is a great source of the dog behavior, which I have to believe. They laugh and laugh and laugh at us about where a dog will come up to you looking like it wants to say hi and be petted, and then at the last minute turn around if we are outreached hand, right, I get that a lot, and my dog does that to people all the time.
At the bug part, it's just.
Like and you feel like you need to apologize. I'm sorry. She's really she's really very timid, you know, she just maybe she's afraid. I don't he's just being an asshole, all right, Oh, you don't have a taiale to put up, and you won't let me smell your body.
You won't let me.
Well, you're not a dog, You're not a dog. I walk away right, all.
Right, Well we'll walk away for now.
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